Privacy Policy

The HDGroup, LLC (HDGroup) is always interested in protecting your privacy when visiting our Miss O and Friends® website and Girl2Girl Wall® app. We do not solicit, collect or keep any personal identifiable information online from you unless you volunteer it and you are 13 or older. Furthermore, we do not solicit, collect or keep personal identifiable information online from children under the age of 13 without their parent’s consent except in limited circumstances authorized by law and described in this Privacy Policy. Please review the entire Privacy Policy below and familiarize yourself with our website policies. The servers that make this site available to you are located in the United States. By using this site you agree to the transfer, collection, processing and use of data by this site.

Use of this website/app signifies your acceptance of this Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions.

PARENTS and GUARDIANS:

In our MissOandFriends.com website the HDGroup uses reasonable efforts to abide by and follow the requirements of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). Parents, it is important that you spend time with your children to determine and monitor the appropriateness of the websites your child visits. Please also instruct your child to never provide personal information about themselves, their family or others on this site or any other site without your permission.

A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF 13 MUST GET PARENTAL OR GUARDIAN CONSENT BEFORE GIVING OUT EMAIL ADDRESSES OR ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION TO THE HDGROUP. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, PLEASE READ THIS POLICY WITH YOUR PARENTS. ASK YOUR PARENTS QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY WORDS AND CONCEPTS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

The HDGroup along with Miss O and Friends®and Girl2Girl Wall want you and your children’s experience with our website to be a fun, positive, learning experience. We urge you to instruct your children to follow common sense, family rules, and precautions whenever disclosing personal information on this site or, for that matter, anywhere on the Internet.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EXPLAINING OUR PRIVACY POLICY:

If I am over 18 or my child is 13 or over, does the HDGroup collect personal information about either of us?
The HDGroup never requires anyone on the Miss O and Friends® website/Girl2Girl Wall app to share any personal information about themselves in order to use the site. You can visit our site without registering with us. Nevertheless, our site contains special sections and privileges for members that register. If you do not wish to register, we do not collect any personal information from you or your child unless it is voluntarily provided, for instance when creating a story, writing on the Girl2Girl Wall or completing an online Smart Quiz. When registering or when specifically asked for personal information, we generally ask for first and last name, mailing address, phone number, an email address and sometimes age. See below for how we may use this information.

If my child is under 13, does the HDGroup collect any personal information about him or her?
We do not collect personal information online from children under 13 without first obtaining their parent’s consent except in special, limited circumstances. If your child is under 13 and wants to use portions of our site with special activities that require registration or require us to obtain personal information, such as to receive a Miss O & Friends® Newsletter, to join the Miss O® Club, to join the Girl2Girl Wall app or to claim a prize we might ask your child to “register.” A child can often register anonymously by just providing a user name (any “screenname” will do) and perhaps a password. When we ask your child for a first name, we encourage you to have your child enter a “screenname” (a made up name or nick name). Sometimes we may request a first name, state that the child lives in and age, for example when writing a story. Other times we will require your child’s first name, last name, home and email address and age; such personal information will only be requested after obtaining your verifiable consent. Only after receiving your consent, we may collect personal information from your child such as a last name, address, email address and age when the information is necessary for a particular activity such as receiving the Miss O & Friends® Newsletter, Email Newsletter; or when entering a contest so that the child and parent can be informed of winning. If we need more than just your child’s first name (or screenname), age and state of residence for your child to participate in a particular online activity, such as if your child signs up for the Miss O & Friends Newsletter, we will ask your child for your email address so that we can notify you and get your permission. When we ask for your permission, we will tell you what we will do with the information you or your child provides us, and we will tell you how you can review your child’s information and ask us to delete the information. We don’t keep your (or your child’s) email address any longer than is needed.

The HDGroup might collect an email address and first name (or screenname) from your child under 13 without your consent, but only in the following special case.

If a child under 13 sends a request to us, then we may keep their email address long enough to respond to them. The HDGroup deletes this information from our system soon after we answer their question or request.

If, at any time, you do not want your child to continue receiving an email newsletter, simply click on the link provided in the email newsletter for removal or contact us at [email protected]

Upon proper identification, parents may review the personal information we have collected about their child, request deletion, or refuse to allow further collection or use by writing to us at: HDGroup, LLC Consumer Relations, Attn: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 3 Lockwood Avenue, Old Greenwich, CT 06870. However, if you ask us to delete your child’s information, we will not be able allow your child to participate in the portions of the Miss O and Friends® site or Girl2Girl Wall app that require registration or contain special activities or privileges.

Are all submissions, posts, photos, stories and comments screened prior to posting? Anything that is submitted on the Miss O & Friends® site or the Girl2Girl Wall app by our users, whether it’s a story, comment, quiz, poll, photo, contest entry, question, or answer, is screened by human eyes, regardless of a childs age. We screen out any personal/identifiable information, such as last names, schools, towns, camps, churches in addition to ensuring that the language is appropriate, no sexual inuendos, subjects are age appropriate for the 8-14 age group. Nothing gets posted without being reviewed first!

What does HDGroup do with collected information?
The HDGroup uses the personal information we collect for the purposes indicated at the time you or your teenager or child (with your consent) provides such information. For instance, if you Create a Story, we may use the information provided to post the story on our website and designate the first name (screenname), age and state of the person who wrote the story. Or, if you register in a contest, we will use the registration information to notify contest winners. Infrequently, and only after receiving consent prior to asking for information, we might email or mail you or your teenager or your child to provide information on upcoming Miss O and Friends® products, website updates and promotions. If, at any time, you want to stop receiving such updates and product information from the HDGroup, just email us at [email protected] Our mailings and emails will also include information or a link allowing you to ask to opt out of receiving such information in the future.

Occasionally we may ask your child what they like or do not like about the characters, the site, the games, etc. We do this to provide to your children more of what they want collectively. We may use and email address and user name to ban a user temporarily or permanently from our web site if that user engages in inappropriate conduct on the site.

We may also disclose collected information where we are required to do so by law, for example, in response to a court order or subpoena, or where we disclose information to service providers who provide support for the operations of our web site and do not use or disclose the information for any purpose. Furthermore, to the extent permitted by applicable law, we may disclose collected information to a law enforcement agency’s or other public agency’s (including schools or children services) request or if we feel that such disclosure may prevent the instigation of a crime, facilitate an investigation related to public safety or protect the safety of a child using our web site, protect the integrity or security of our website, or enable us to take precautions against liability.

If we sell all or part of our business or make a sale or transfer of our assets or are otherwise involved in a merger or business transfer, we may transfer collected information to a third party as part of the transaction, to the extent permitted by law.

Does the HDGroup share or provide information about me with others?
From time to time, the HDGroup may provide your information to outside companies that offer products or services that may be of interest if your teenager 13 or older consents. Except as described in this policy, we never share personal information that we receive online from children under 13 with other companies outside of the HDGroup. We will remove your name from the list we provide to outside companies if you email us at [email protected], and we will do the same for your teenager’s name if they request removal from the list. In special circumstances, the HDGroup may allow other companies access to our personal information database. Such special circumstances may be necessary to allow access for providing maintenance to our database, software, servers or routers, for updating security, for helping to process and fill orders or requests, or for providing other necessary services to the HDGroup. When we provide access to the HDGroup’s personal information database, we require those other companies to sign confidentiality agreements promising to keep secret any information they see. If the HDGroup believes that anyone’s behavior on our site may damage us, our site or anyone else; we may disclose to the appropriate authorities the relevant personal information in order to prevent this harm. In that case, we might try to identify the wrongdoer, contact them or bring legal action against them. We may also disclose personal information if we believe that the disclosure is required by law, or in response to a proper legal request.

Does the HDGroup use cookies?
From time to time, the HDGroup may drop a cookie onto your computer’s hard drive. A “cookie” is a small file that we save on your computer’s hard drive. The cookie does not contain personal information. Miss O and Friends® cookies may help to give you faster access to pages you have already visited; they allow you to personalize your pages and us to enhance the performance of the site pages; and they aid in your participation in a few of the activities on the site. For instance, our site may have games or activities in which we need to use cookies to keep track of the things you have already completed or answered. If you leave the site and then return, cookies will tell us what things you have already done or where you have advanced to in a game so that you do not have to start all over again. Cookies may be used to keep track of items in your wish list. We also use cookies to help us figure out how many people visit our sites, which of our Web pages they stop at and how long they stay there. This information helps us figure out which of our Web features are successes and where we need to improve. For administrative purposes, we may collect IP addresses, which is the automatic number assigned to your computer when you surf the Web. The IP address allows us to count total number of “hits” on our sites. However, your IP address and cookie are not connected to any personally identifiable or online contact information like a name and address, so you and your family remain anonymous. We also may use other technology, called clear GIFs, to provide us with other important anonymous information, such as when an email has been opened.

Does the HDGroup ever collect information without consent?
When visitors come to our site, certain non-personally identifiable computer information may be passively collected. Such information may include, the user’s IP address, the web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari) being used, the frequency with which a visitor visits part of our web site, and information about the Internet Service Provider, in order to make our web site more interesting and useful to our users and for various reasons related to our business.

The HDGroup does not collect information passively through cookies or other tracking mechanisms except in the circumstances described above. Cookies do not contain any personal information about a specific user. We do not use cookies or other non-consensual methods to take personally identifiable or online contact information about you or your family off of your computer. Except for certain activities, addressed above, the HDGroup does not use cookies for direct marketing or promotional purposes. Cookies are also not used to collect information specifically about you or your family for sharing with third parties.

Are third-party advertisers used by the HDGroup?

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Web site or app. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please see: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

Cookies & 3rd Party Advertisements
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our web site or app. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

GDPR Statement

HD Group, LLC is service provider, located outside the EU. Our only physical location is based in the United States of America. We provide Internet based services to customers outside the EU. Visitors to our internet services can use our services when they travel to other countries, including within the EU. Our company has always maintained (USA) COPPA compliance, never specifically targeting our services at individuals in the USA, EU, or anywhere in the world. We have always been and currently are COPPA compliant; thus we are compliant with the rules of the GDPR. We do not collect PII (Personally Identifiable Information) of any users. Our compliance to not collect any PII (personally identifiable information), includes, but is not limited to: No automatic email opt-ins. We only collect and use email addresses when users opt-in. Users must be at least 13 years old to participate. If users are younger than 13 years old, parental permission must be provided to participate. In this instance, we still do not possess any PII (no last name, no address). The only user information we hold is first name, state and age, and email address. For users opting-in, either age 13 or older, or, if younger than age 13, with parental permission, we hold a user volunteered reference email only. We do not share this referenced email information. We do not share non-PII information – it is only used to communicate with our members. Individuals’ requesting their email to be deleted are purged from our database with 24 hours and confirmed via our webmaster and hosting providers. We employee an outside hosting provider who updates, on-going, state-of-the-art technology and procedures to detect, report and investigate any data breach. Our Data Protection by Design and Data Protection Impact Assessments comply with the ICO’s code of practice on Privacy Impact Assessments, as well as the latest guidance from the Article 29 Working Party. All decision makers in our organization are aware of the GDPR law and appreciate its’ impact. Given our GDPR status, although not mandatory, our CEO continues to serve as our designated Data Protection Officer.

Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy. We hope our privacy policy gave you a clear understanding of the ways your personal information may be collected and used by the HDGroup. We also hope our privacy policy helps you to realize the ways in which we really are committed to safeguarding online privacy. Please note that, we may change our policy from time to time. When this happens we will notify you of the new policy by posting a privacy policy revision date at the beginning of our privacy policy. If you have any questions about our privacy policy, always contact us to get an answer! Use of this site signifies your acceptance of the terms and conditions.